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THE DIALECTICS OF RACISM: AMIRI BARAKA’S
PERCEPTION

Amiri Baraka’s impact on Ameri­can consciousness is not only that of a writer but also that of a symbol sug­gesting a blending of European radicalism and ‘rebellious energies�. His plays suggest interaction between an ‘action and its perspective,� between the present and the past as also the foreseen time, between the loss of identity and awareness of it in terms of what could be known as one’s own destiny.

Amiri Baraka’s work carries a high voltage emotional charge because of its attempting to use the theatre as an agent of revolutionary change, so­cial, political and cultural, in America in accordance with his credo spelt out in his provocative essay, “The Revolu­tionary Theatre.� Defining its role Baraka says:

The Revolutionary Theatre should force change: it should be changeâ€�..(It) must EXPOSE,show up the insides of these humans, look into black skulls. White men will cower before this theatre because it hates them. Because they themselves have been trained to have. The Revo­lutionary Theatre must hate them for hating…â€�(It must teach them their deaths...must take dreams and give them a reality...It is a political theatre, a weapon to help in the slaughter of these dimwitted fat-bellied white guys who somehow believe that the rest of the world is here for them to slobber on...This is a theatre of assault. The play that will split the heavens for us will be called THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA. ¹

It may be seen that Amiri Baraka regards the Black writer as a moralist and the Revolutionary Theatre as a ‘theatre of victims.� Baraka considers the political character of black art to be what distinguishes it from other American art. His view draws attention to the fact that the movement of Black literature follows the trajectory of the Black’s history from slavery, the 17th century through partial emancipation in the 1960’s from muted protest to full-throated protest.

Though his plays for the most part are unrelentingly propagandistic, they draw attention to issues which are not merely of racist concern but of profound human significance - issues like displacement, loss of identity, alienation and existential despair. It is not, therefore, surprising that his plays project themes which have not only socio-political implications be­cause of their being predicated on the African-American political dynamics but also symbolic and mythical ones traceable to their use of motifs drawn from religious and folkloric myths.

His plays, indeed, seem to exem­plify what Langston Hughes and W.E.B. Du Bois envisioned as a re­sponsibility and role of young Black artists during the Harlem Renais­sance. Elaborating their views Baraka says:

The Black artist must draw out of his soul the correct image of the world. He must use this im­age to band his brothers and sis­ters together in common under­standing of the nature of the world (and the nature of Amer­ica) and the nature of the hu­man soul. The Black Artist must demonstrate sweet life, how it differs from the deathly grip of the White Eyes. ²

Amiri Baraka’a most outstanding play to date, Dutchman brings out the tragic predicament of the American Black as illustrated by the harrowing experience of a twenty-year old middle class Negro. Clay in withstanding the attempt of the thirty-year old white woman, Lula to seduce him in a sub­way employing arguments reminiscent of Eve and Satan rolled into one, which results in his being ritualisti­cally murdered by Lula. Its theme, as spelt out by Baraka; is said to be the difficulty of being a man in America and a variation on it figures in yet an­other well-known play of his. The Slave. The Slave centres on the at­tempt of a Black leader and poet. Walker Vessels, to come to terms with his oppressed life or to achieve his sanity through murder. Visiting his former white wife, Grace, and her present husband, Easley, a professor and friend of his, he has heated exc­hanges with them which end in Ea­sley being killed while trying to over­power Walker and Grace getting killed by the falling debris due to an explo­sion.

The Baptism, Baraka’s most out­rageous and blasphemous play, fo­cuses on the struggle of Satan in a Negro Baptist church with the preacher over the soul of the Son of God, a fifteen-year old Boy come to be baptised. Accused of being a blas­phemer, by the very persons who hailed him as the Son of God who de­cide to sacrifice him so as to cleanse, themselves, the Boy murders the Preacher, the Old Woman and the ‘brides of the Lord’s Son� for lacking in charity. The Boy is forcibly taken home to his father, while God, dis­gusted with the state of the world, plans to destroy it with a grenade. Sa­tan decides to visit the bars in the Forty-Second Street and wonder what ‘the cute little religious fanatic� is sub­jected to.

The Toilet is another play of Baraka’s intended to shock the people into recognizing the hypocrisy that has vitiated human relationships. Set in a stinking latrine, the play features high school boys, mostly black, and the vio­lent happenings caused by a love letter written by a White boy, Karolis, to an intelligent Black boy. Ray Foots. Forced into fighting Karolis by his fellow Blacks. Foots tries not to hurt Ka­rolls only to find him beaten by the gang. The play ends with Foots stealthily returning and weeping over the injured Karolis. The Toilet offers a disturbing image of the mainstream American society which appears to be clogged by ‘moral filth� as also that of the agony involved in attaining a self-­identity while beset with opposing cul­tural forces.

The significance of Amiri Baraka’s achievement as a poet, play­wright, essayist and political activist, lies in its being at once a cultural seis­mograph of the shifts in the American Blacks in the Black Power Movement and a barometer of the convulsions in the American Consciousness.

¹ LeRoi Jones, Home: Social Essays (New York: William Morrow 1966), pp. 210-215.
² Ibid., pp 251-252.